Squash Referees & Rules

This letter from Graham Waters, WSF Director
Referees and Rules Committee, just to remind us all about referees ensuring a
'fair warm up'

Dear All

There is a growing trend in some areas
of squash for some players to engage in what is an unfair warm-up. This happens
when one of the players preparing for a match dominates the warm-up by hitting
the ball back to himself or herself over and over again, and only sending it
over to the opponent occasionally. The intent of the warm-up is for the two
players to hit the ball equally and fairly. This does not mean that players must
hit only cross-courts back to each other, but it does mean that any one player
should hit only a few shots consecutively before passing the ball over for the
opponent to hit. This situation came to a head at the recent World Junior
Championships in Chennai.

Compounding this problem is that
sometimes the referee is not watching for this. Refereeing assignments are such
that the referee may be coming from another court and may not be present when
the players take to the court and the warm-up begins, or they take the
opportunity to run to the toilet, particularly if they are doing back-to-back
matches. Also, some referees do not take the warm-up seriously enough and take
the opportunity to chat with a friend, colleague, or the audience, or to fill in
their score sheet.

Rule 3.2 is quite clear that the referee
must make sure that both players are able to warm-up fairly:

3.2 In the warm-up, both players
must have equal opportunities of striking the ball. A player retaining the
strike for an unreasonable time is warming up unfairly. The Referee shall decide
when the warm-up is unfair and apply Rule 17.

I would ask all WSF Referees to take
note of this problem and for all National Squash Federations to pass this email
to all their Referees and to those within their jurisdictions who are
responsible for running tournaments, leagues, or pennants.

Thank you all for your attention to this
matter. I hope we can rid our sport of this unseemly trend.